Pay no attention to the people behind the curtain

Friday, June 19, 2009

Whoa

by folkbum

So my storm-phobic dog wakes me up in the middle of the night, and I pull up the news to see the damage (wunderground tells me there's been tornado warnings about). I was not expecting to see this kind of damage.

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COLD LIGHT OF MORNING UPDATE: Generally, I let people's personal failures lie, unless there is something that makes such a failure something more than mere human weakness; otherwise, it looks like public reveling in others' private misfortune. (For example, I took no pleasure--and personally made no mention on this blog--of the earlier-than-expected Plain grandchild.)

But two things prompted the above comment. One is that McBride has broken a very strict commandment of journalism. She is for the most part now a crime reporter for Milwaukee Magazine, reporting not just on Chief Flynn in recent months but also on topics like the possible upper-Mississippi serial killer who murders drunk college kids and tosses them in the river. If this is her beat, she's crossed a big red line.

Two, Flynn's arrival in town was heralded, far too much so, by the morality squawkers on line, in print, and over the air. He was coming in to clean up the town, this Good, Upstanding, Irish Catholic (another factoid from McBride's writings on Flynn) man was going to put Milwaukee criminals on notice, the squawkers said, and they celebrated his every victory. A high-profile man whose base of support expects--nay, demands--fealty to the straight and narrow has gone off track, and reaction will be interesting to watch. Will they demand his head, as they did with John Norquist? Will they let it slide? (Of course, many of these same morality-police righties are proud to be called "Charlie Sykes Storm Troopers," and Sykes himself is not such a role model for marital fidelity.)

ONE MORE UPDATE: 1. Brawler has a compendium. Not kind to the parties involved. 2. Dan Cody is nicer. 3. Wiggy sure picked the wrong week to stop sniffing glueblogging.